The Penalty eBook

Rose sat at the window of her room looking upward
into a night of stars. She could not sleep.
Twice she had heard the legless man pass her door
upon his crutches. Each time he had hesitated,
and once, or so she thought, he had laid his hand
upon the door-knob. She wondered how much of
her wakefulness was due to fright; and how much to
the excitement of being well launched upon a case
of tremendous importance, for the secret service knew
that Blizzard was engaged upon a colossal plot of some
sort, and just what that was Rose had volunteered,
at the risk of her life, and of her honor, to find
out.

XII

The next morning, at the appointed hour, Blizzard
climbed the stairs to Barbara’s studio, knocked,
and was admitted. That he was welcome, if only
for his head’s sake, was at once evident.

“Something told me that you wouldn’t
fail me,” said Barbara.

“You can be quite easy about that,” said
Blizzard. “I am in the habit of keeping
my word.”

He climbed to the model’s platform and seated
himself as upon the previous morning, with a kind
of business-like directness.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

Barbara withdrew the damp cloths from the clay, looked
critically from the bust to the original and back
again. “My work,” she said, “still
looks right to me. But you don’t.”

Blizzard smiled.

“Yesterday,” she said, “you looked
as if you were suffering like,” she laughed,
“like the very devil. To-day you look well
fed and contented. Now that won’t do.
Try to remember what you were thinking about when I
first saw you.”

At once, as a fresh slide is placed in a magic-lantern,
the legless man’s expression of well-being vanished,
and that dark tortured look of Satan fallen which
had so fired Barbara’s imagination, once more
possessed his features. Barbara’s eyes flashed
with satisfaction.

“It wasn’t hard for you to remember what
you were thinking about, was it?” she said.

“It was not,” said Blizzard, and his voice
was cold as a well-curb. “When I first
saw you, I was thinking thoughts that can never be
forgotten.”

“Lift your chin, please,” she said, “just
a fraction. So. Turn your head a fraction
more toward me. Good. And please don’t
think of anything pleasant until I tell you.
Anybody can make an exact copy of a head. Expressions
are the things that only lucky people can catch.”

“I believe you are one of them,” said
Blizzard. “I believe you will catch mine—­if
you keep on wanting to.”

“I must,” she said simply.

And then for half an hour there was no sound in the
studio but the long-drawn breathing of the legless
man. Barbara worked in a kind of grim, exalted
silence.

Meanwhile Bubbles was climbing the back stair to his
bedroom, where he had left Harry, the secret-service
agent, on guard over Barbara. The boy, all out
of breath with haste, opened his right fist and disclosed
a narrow slip of paper with writing on it.